But firehouse, relics may survive at existing site

Bill Edge, Houston Fire Museum Board Member, walks through the children's area where cracks on the floor are starting to appear due to foundation shift.

Bill Edge, Houston Fire Museum Board Member, walks through the children's area where cracks on the floor are starting to appear due to foundation shift.

Photo: Mayra Beltran, Houston Chronicle

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Tristan Smith, Executive Director of the Houston Fire Museum, stands near the burnt bricks from the 4-alarm hotel fire where four firefighters were killed. There is no storage area to house all the artifacts, so they are placed on top of a filing cabinet in the unfinished staff office. less

Tristan Smith, Executive Director of the Houston Fire Museum, stands near the burnt bricks from the 4-alarm hotel fire where four firefighters were killed. There is no storage area to house all the artifacts, ... more

Firefighters living quarters on display in the second floor where windows leak and cracks on the wall is starting to create cracks on the walls at the Houston Fire Museum.

Firefighters living quarters on display in the second floor where windows leak and cracks on the wall is starting to create cracks on the walls at the Houston Fire Museum.

Photo: Mayra Beltran, Houston Chronicle

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Fire call box on display at Houston Fire Museum.

Fire call box on display at Houston Fire Museum.

Photo: Mayra Beltran, Houston Chronicle

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Chief's desk on display on the second floor at the Houston Fire Museum.

Chief's desk on display on the second floor at the Houston Fire Museum.

Photo: Mayra Beltran, Houston Chronicle

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Bill Edge, Houston Fire Museum Board Member, discusses future plans for museum as he stands between a fire truck that needs restoration and "In The Line of Fire" sculpture which are located behind the museum.

Bill Edge, Houston Fire Museum Board Member, discusses future plans for museum as he stands between a fire truck that needs restoration and "In The Line of Fire" sculpture which are located behind the museum.

Photo: Mayra Beltran, Houston Chronicle

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Bill Edge, Houston Fire Museum Board Member, points out
material on the roof that has detached and fallen from the building.

Bill Edge, Houston Fire Museum Board Member, points out
material on the roof that has detached and fallen from the building.

Photo: Mayra Beltran, Houston Chronicle

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A restored fire engine on display at the Houston Fire Museum.

A restored fire engine on display at the Houston Fire Museum.

Photo: Mayra Beltran, Houston Chronicle

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All the windows leak and it's damaging exposed brick at the Houston Fire Museum.

All the windows leak and it's damaging exposed brick at the Houston Fire Museum.

Photo: Mayra Beltran, Houston Chronicle

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Tristan Smith, Executive Director of the Houston Fire Museum, walks by the windows that leak and are damaging the exposed bricks in the firefighters living quarters display.

Tristan Smith, Executive Director of the Houston Fire Museum, walks by the windows that leak and are damaging the exposed bricks in the firefighters living quarters display.

Photo: Mayra Beltran, Houston Chronicle

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Bill Edge, Houston Fire Museum Board Member, discusses the need for a bigger theater to host a high number of students that visit.

Bill Edge, Houston Fire Museum Board Member, discusses the need for a bigger theater to host a high number of students that visit.

Photo: Mayra Beltran, Houston Chronicle

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Bill Edge, fire museum board member, walks through the children's area of the old firehouse. Plans for a
$15 million midtown museum have been scrapped, but sale of its proposed site may help preserve the station. less

Bill Edge, fire museum board member, walks through the children's area of the old firehouse. Plans for a
$15 million midtown museum have been scrapped, but sale of its proposed site may help preserve the ... more

Photo: Mayra Beltran, Staff

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Tristan Smith, museum director, has no room for artifacts such as bricks from a hotel fire that killed four firefighters.

Tristan Smith, museum director, has no room for artifacts such as bricks from a hotel fire that killed four firefighters.

Photo: Mayra Beltran, Staff

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Leaking windows and cracked floors are problems at the Houston Fire Museum's old firehouse, notes board member Bill Edge. Money from the sale of a proposed museum site for new apartments, however, may help the museum preserve artifacts and fix up the station. About 25,000 people tour the firehouse annually. less

Leaking windows and cracked floors are problems at the Houston Fire Museum's old firehouse, notes board member Bill Edge. Money from the sale of a proposed museum site for new apartments, however, may help the ... more

Photo: Mayra Beltran, Staff

Fire museum plans doused by lack of funding

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Back to Gallery

Unable to raise the needed funds, the Fire Museum of Houston on Friday said plans for a $15 million state-of-the-art midtown museum have gone up in smoke. Rising from the ashes, though, are proposals to buy the museum's present 1898 firehouse home from the city and upgrade its exhibits and educational activities.

Money for those improvements should come from a pending sale of the museum's planned building site, a 1.44-acre tract at Main and Hadley for apartment development.

M. Scot Davis of Trammell Crow Residential said the high-end project, Alexan Midtown, will have five stories of apartments atop two levels of parking. Davis said the average 850-square-foot unit will lease for about $1,700 a month.

Sale of property is to close on Monday, Davis said. Construction of the 215-unit complex should begin in January, with the first units ready for occupancy in early 2015.

Museum officials said the decision to sell the choice midtown property, donated to the museum 17 years ago, came after nine years of unsuccessful efforts to raise funds.

The planned building would have included 15 bays for vintage firefighting vehicles, interactive exhibits and thousands of square feet of exhibit space. Part of the money would have been used to spruce up old Fire Station No. 7, the city's first professional firehouse at 2403 Milam, which the museum leases from the city and has occupied since 1982.

"This is not happy news," museum director Tristan Smith said of the aborted building plans, "but it does enable the museum to have a good long-term ability to reach out to the community in some innovative ways."

Museum board member and treasurer Bill Edge said his group hopes to use some of the money from the sale to buy, renovate and expand its current home.

Humberto Bautista, assistant director for asset management and strategic planning at the city's Department of General Services, confirmed that museum officials have expressed interest in buying the building.

The station last was used by firefighters in 1969. The museum is not connected to the Houston Fire Department.

Fire safety, prevention

Approximately 25,000 visitors tour the museum annually, Smith said.

Although much of the museum's mission is fire safety and prevention, school groups have not fully utilized the museum because of its relatively small size, Edge said. "The school district doesn't like to do tours unless they can send out a couple of buses," he said.

Money from the sale also will be used to craft online exhibits for the museum's web site.

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When plans for the proposed museum were announced in 2004, cost of the project was placed at $9 million. A variety of design options was considered, but the museum's attempts at fundraising consistently fell flat. Edge said the group was not able to collect "seed money" needed to attract philanthropic contributions. No money will be returned to donors, he said, because none was collected.

Tom McDonald, president of the museum board, was out of the country and unreachable Friday. In a statement he said directors had considered other options when it became clear that construction funds could not be raised.

"We sought a government grant to turn the block into a public park with a firefighting theme," he said. "Our desire was to construct the park in a modular manner so that we could dismantle parts of it as we gained funding to build new facilities on the property."

Museum officials abandoned the plan when they learned they would be obligated to operate the property as a park for 15 years and that they would be required to fund park maintenance.

Deals fell through

Museum directors then approached a commercial office developer, offering a long-term lease in exchange for the option of leasing part of the ground floor for the museum. That deal also fell through.

The only part of plans for the new museum to come to fruition was the creation of a bronze statue of a heroic firefighter, ax raised, at the critical moment of battling a blaze. For years it stood on the vacant site of the intended structure.

Several weeks ago, the artwork was relocated to the museum's Milam Street building in preparation for the expected sale.